Transition
by JMK758
Summary: Michelle's plan for a short journey goes awry. This is an aside from my on-going mystery series, a look two years ahead, and a view of CBS' and my worlds together.
1. Mirror Effect

This is an aside from my ongoing series of NCIS mysteries, which follow a history where Jennifer Shepherd and Michelle Lee Palmer had not been killed, but had lived at least into the 2030's. This is a look some two years ahead of where my mystery series is in 2010. The usual legal disclaimers apply.

Transition  
by JMK758  
Chapter One  
Mirror Effect

"Okay, remember, tomorrow's dinner is in the freezer," Michelle Palmer tells her husband as she buttons her green blouse. "Just put it in the microwave for four minutes, and for your own happiness let it sit for two before you takes it out or it'll be cold inside." She drapes a circled pentagram pendant over her head, tucks the back chain under her collar. "You won't forget, will you?"

This attention to detail is one reason why Jimmy loves her, but sometimes her care can be a bit much. "'Chelle, how can I forget? In for two, sit for four."

She looks up into his grin. "Bon appétit."

"I'll miss your teat."

She grins, thinking Special Agent Gibbs has got it right, sometimes Jimmy really needs a wake-up call, or more likely punishment. Then again, she's afraid he might enjoy it. "I'll be just two nights. You won't even know I was gone."

But he sees the look in her eyes, hears the hesitation in her voice. "Go on, I'll be fine. You've looked forward to this all year." He glances at the seven foot tall mirror in their living room, the wooden frame ornately carved with occult symbols. Prominent is the circled five pointed star that crowns it. "It's not like it's four hundred miles away."

Actually the Beltane Festival in Salem, Massachusetts is almost exactly that far away, though by traveling through the Scrying Mirror she'll be there in seconds.

Mirror Transitioning is incredibly convenient, the only drawback being the 'transition vertigo' at the other end as her body adjusts to her new orientation on the rotating and orbiting Earth. Short distance travel is one thing, but a trip back to China often feels like she's been turned inside out as her inner ear must cope with a cumulative reversal of objective linear direction of 36 miles a second. She arrives oriented, doesn't risk a high speed fall, but her system doesn't believe that.

x

"Okay," she says, picking up a long, hooded cloak - green on one side, purple velvet on the other and drapes it over her shoulders, purple side out. "Have to arrive in style," she says in answer to his questioning look.

"Do you?"

She's caught. "Actually not," she admits. "Nothing's going to happen until dawn but there's just something wrong about arriving in jeans and tee shirt."

"You could always arrive 'skyclad'."

"Oh, _sure_, that'll cause a stir." To be skyclad is to be clothed only in the light of the Goddess. "'Sides, you know I don't do 'skyclad'."

"Except with me," he reminds her with a lecherous grin.

"That's not 'skyclad', that's nude."

"What's the difference?"

She glances down. "Around you, eight inches."

x

"Come to think of it, what if you miss?" he asks, still holding the picture of her arriving at the hotel lobby with nothing but a suitcase.

"I can't miss," she scoffs, the nonsense easy to dismiss. Kendra Little, High Priestess of Rising Star Coven, had provided everyone with the picture of the room anyone transitioning in is to target. Little has also provided its exact location within the hotel and that building's location in the city. All she must do is hold the target in her mind and she'll walk right into the room.

She glances at the clock on the opposite wall. Working a case right up to the last minute had made her late, it's after midnight. It's not that the time means much, nothing begins until sunrise, but she'd still like to have left earlier.

"Well," she spreads the floor-length cloak, her body back-curtained in green, "how do I look?"

Her silk blouse is pine green, her medium-length skirt russet, her slippers match it. Earth colors are not just appropriate to the season, they're her preferred ones. The pentagram suspended between her breasts gleams in the room light.

He grins. "Delicious."

"Letch. I'm serious."

"Why are you wearing _that _star?"

"Oh, Jimmy, _please_?" Her favorite pendant is the one he'd commissioned from a jeweler to celebrate their engagement. That circled star encloses, in the pentagon formed by the crisscrossing lines, a Christian cross: the symbols of her dual faiths.

But the independence she enjoys in Rising Star - and her daily life in NCIS - might not carry over well in an international gathering of Covens. There's a time for uniqueness and a time for conformity.

x

"I'm sorry, Honey, you're right."

"Look, it's time to leave. I'll see you Wednesday morning," she says, picking up the small overnight case.

He pouts, his voice warbling. "I'll miss you. You'll be so far away."

"Idiot. Kiss me."

She puts her free left arm about him in a hug but his hands slip between them to cup her breasts. She doesn't pull away, enjoying the stroking of his fingers as they kiss. She pulls an inch back from his lips. "You're incorrigible."

"Would you want to corrige me?" He gently tweaks her nipples.

"No," she decides, "but if I don't leave now I'll never go."

"I prefer it when you come."

This does make her pull out of reach, though the sensations remain hot in her ignited body. "You horny satyr! _Goodbye_."

"_Come _back soon."

She turns to the tall mirror, their images reversed in the wide glass. 'If I don't get out of here now...' She doesn't need to complete the thought, the lustful sensations he'd ignited leave her no doubt, as usual, as to what they'd do.

She tries to push the sensations from her mind - she can't push them from her body - and to concentrate on the activating spell. She steps forward.

"Don't get lost."

She glances past the reflection of her body to the mirrored room. "I never get lost."

She can barely feel the glass as she steps through it.

oo

The vortex is silent as she walks, the blackness filled with flashes of light that burst in every hue and shade of the rainbow. Colored light streaks toward her, warps past at dazzling speed, belying her strolling pace.

She's never allowed herself to wonder if they're stationary and she's moving at tremendous velocity or if she is actually walking as though across a room. When doing magic in the cosmic vortex, she dares not break her concentration.

oo

The room materializes around her, revealed in the two-dimensional plane as though she'd stepped through a doorway and then it resolves into three dimensions. That's another thing its best not to dwell on. She'd seen vortex materialization from the rear only once and decided, when she'd awoken from a dead faint, that it'd been much worse than walking in on an autopsy.

Though the lights are off, enough light filters in through the curtains for her to recognize her own living room.

'What the heck?' jumps through her mind simultaneously with the thought that Jimmy had turned off the light and gone down the short hallway to her right and to bed. "Ji–?" she starts to call softly.

The Transition vertigo is like a mule kick. Nauseated, she staggers and drops the overnight case with a loud bang. The vertigo kicks her a second time, harder than she'd ever known. She falls forward, can't get her hands up. Her carpet approaches fast, disappears into oblivion before she hits it.

xx

Early morning light filters through the blue curtains when Michelle forces her eyes open. Her muscles feel like overcooked pasta as she pushes herself an inch off the floor. 'Oh Goddess, what went wrong?'

She's on her living room carpet, rather than in a hotel room in Salem, Massachusetts, and warm under the 'blanket' of her purple and green cloak. She remembers the worst bout of vertigo she's ever known and a tsunami of nausea overwhelms her. She fights it back, clamps her hand over her mouth, forces herself not to vomit. This is worse than the worst transition vertigo she'd ever felt. That worst had come last night.

"Jimmy?" she calls, barely daring to speak through her hand. 'How's he going to hear me when I can barely hear myself?'

She tries to fight the nausea down, but it's a hard battle to settle her stomach. She knows if she loses this battle, she has to clean the rug and that provides an extra incentive to fight. 'I usually don't get sick from T.V.,' she thinks, 'but then I don't usually get blasted off my feet either. This was worse than China.'

She gradually fights the sickness down and is about to call out again when she freezes, recognizing the sound she does hear.

Rhythmic thumping of the bed down the hall punctuates feminine cries of passionate delight - coming from the bedroom. 'What the hell?'

Outrage ignites a deeper rage and gives her the strength to shove herself off the floor. She staggers, but growing anger charges her body. 'He _can't _be….'

She stumbles to the short corridor, works her way down the hall past the bathroom to the closed bedroom door. The rhythmic noises of passionate lovemaking, the thumps of her headboard against the bathroom wall, drive the fugue from mind and body. She reaches the door as the sounds rise to a climax. 'He _can't _be–!'

She shoves the door hard enough for it to splinter against the left wall. To her right, in the early morning light filtering through the drapes across the room is a sight she's never had nightmares about.

x

A naked blonde bitch clings to her husband, arms and legs wrapped around him! He pounds into her, his every thrust met by her and the bed slams into the wall in lewd rhythm. The strumpet's cries reach a climax almost drowned out by the door's crash and Michelle slams the button beside her with her fist. The room explodes in light.

"_JIMMY_!"

Her scream blasts the pair apart. He lands on his own side of the bed, leaves the whore uncovered. He snatches his glasses off the night table as the blonde bitch lies frozen, sweaty and horrified. He yanks his glasses on and mortal terror fills his face.

She'll give him a reason to be terrified!

"WHAT THE _FUCK _ARE YOU _DOING_?" She realizes it's a stupid question, but she's too furious to care. Jimmy stares at her, wide-eyed and petrified.

"Who're you?" the appalled blonde demands, belatedly remembering to hide her breasts and crotch and failing at both.

"I'm his _wife_, you bitch!"

"His _wife_?" She turns to the frozen man who knows he's about to land on his own autopsy table. Her slap cracks through the room.

"GET OUTTA MY BED!" Blasted by the scream, the woman leaps up, backs away over her discarded clothes toward the foot of the bed. "GET OUT OF MY APARTMENT NOW!"

"I'm sorry! I didn't – he said–"

Michelle reaches into her cloak, clutches the amulet suspended between her breasts, yanks its power and feels the mystic energy fill her to bursting. 'Do no harm be _damned_.' "GET OUT BEFORE I TIE YOUR _TUBES TOGETHER_!"

The blonde whore bends, grasps at the clothes scattered beside the bed.

"_GET OUT_!" Michelle readies a blast that'll turn the bitch inside out.

She runs past, clutching the wrinkled bundle. Michelle, too furious to care, focuses her fury on her petrified, naked husband. The red handprint is livid on his cheek, and he still hasn't taken his eyes off her.

"You _bastard_!" She spits the word down at him. "I go away for a– I catch yo– What've you got to _say_ for yourself?" He's frozen, muted by terror, staring up at her with bulging eyes, his face paper-white. She knows he knows she has the power to decimate him; that she can give him a treatment Viagra can never cure and she decides she'll never miss it.

"WELL?" she demands, takes a step forward. He flinches away. "ANSWER ME, DAMN YOU!"

He breaks, leaps from the bed and gets it between them. She's too furious to care. It won't save him.

"WHAT'VE YOU GOT TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?" She'd leap over the bed to throttle him.

"YOU'RE _DEAD_!"


	2. Neverland

Chapter Two  
Neverland

Astonishment short-circuits Michelle Palmer's fury. Jimmy hadn't said it as a threat, but as a soul-felt cry of utter panic. "What do you mean, I'm 'dead'?"

"Agent Gibbs shot you! Nearly two years ago! You're _dead_!"

"Special Agent Gibbs is my Team Leader," she declares, rejecting this mad claim. "Why would he want to shoot me?"

"Oh, I don't know - _treason_?"

"_What_?"

"Treason. You betrayed us."

She steps forward, knees blocked by the mattress. "Jimmy, wh–"

He backs away. "Keep away from me! You're _dead_!"

"Jimmy, I'm not dead," she insists, unable to believe this. He really is scared - no, he's terrified - of _her_. Not for what the outraged wife - the witch - will do to the unfaithful husband; of _her_.

x

Then she notices beyond him that the television and stand are where they used to be, where her dresser is – was – should be. She glances to her left where the television belongs, where it was last night. His bookcase from the living room is back where it was - where it was...

She looks between them and this is the bed he _used _to have, the one barely wide enough to sleep cuddled in each other's arms when they – before they got – before they replaced...

"What's going on?" she breathes, too appalled to ask it aloud.

"You're _dead_."

"No, I'm –" She's too soul-sick to say it.

"Two _years_. You're dead."

She focuses back on him, on his terrified eyes. "_Will _you stop _saying _that?"

"You're–"

"STOP!"

Her heart pounds so hard it hurts. The drumbeat in her ears and the dizziness make her nauseous again. Now she's the one who's scared. She manages to sit on the edge of the bed, has to brace herself to keep from falling off. "What ... happened?"

"Agent Gibbs shot y–"

"For Goddess' sake, Jimmy, if you can't make sense then _shut up_!"

x

She tries to think. The room is the off-white of long untended paint, isn't the light blue they'd agreed on and painted so long ago. This bed is the one she hasn't sat on since a week after they got back from their Hawaiian honeymoon two years ago. She looks at her hand, she has her ring on but when she looks at his hand he doesn't and he didn't just take it off to get lucky...

She looks up to the no-longer-familiar ceiling. "Goddess Venus - what happened?"

x

It's several long moments before she can look at her naked husband – non-husband? He's at least followed her appeal and kept silent. She sees in his eyes how wrong she is. How wrong everything is. 'Hell, he's as appalled as I am.'

"Jimmy, I'm going to tell you something you're probably not going to ... Oh, hell, what year is this?"

"It - it's - its 2010."

"Well, at least something's right," she sighs, then meets his eyes. "Jimmy, whether you believe this or not, I am not dead, I _am _your wife, we _do _live in this apartment - kind of." She sighs. "And something has gone really, really wrong."

"Ya think?"

She shakes her head. "Okay, I don't know what went wrong but I think I know how to fix it." She looks up at him. "I need my Scrying mirror."

"Your whatting what?"

x

She shakes her head again, feeling fear-nausea about to overtake her. She buries her face into her hands. The hooded cloak feels too hot.

"All right, Jimmy, the short, short version, _please _try to keep up." She looks up at him on the other side of the bed, for the first time in years wishing he'd put on some clothes. She knows he's as stunned as she is, too much so to think about it.

"Here goes. We're married. I'm a witch. I cast a spell to get to Salem, Massachusetts using my Scrying mirror, and I think I need it to get back home - wherever that is..." She buries her face back into her hands. "And I am feeling really, really _sick_."

"Down the hall."

"I know," she says testily through her hands, "I live here."

She undoes the tie holding the hooded purple and green cloak, pushes herself up, fear-sick, and lets the cloak fall onto the bed. She makes it to the bathroom but wins the fight with her stomach. It takes her a minute before she can trust herself to straighten and turn to look into the mirror over the sink.

She has never before seen so much fear in her own face.

But at least she's won one battle and didn't have to humiliate herself.

xx

When she can return to the bedroom Jimmy is dressed in blue trousers, white shirt and fearful, distrusting eyes. He's got his back to the television, only a foot or so from the wall. She stays near the door, on 'her' side of the thin bed. "What happened to us?" She knows she should focus on correcting whatever happened - but he's her husband. He _is_! "Who - why was that...?"

"Breena Slater."

"Breena Slater? What about u–"

"We broke it off," he says very quickly.

"I broke it off?" Impossible. Unthinkable.

"_I _broke it off. You were just using me."

"I _never _used–!"

"You did!"

She raises her hands. "Please. Stop. No more, I can't deal..." He gives her moments of merciful silence. "Jimmy, I don't know what happened - but we're happily ... that is ... No. Focus. I _need _my Scrying mirror."

"Goodwill."

"What?"

"You're de–" Her upraised hands cut him off.

"Yeah, okay, I know, I'm dead. But I'm not. Where's–? I need my mirror – I think."

"Who would you leave it to?"

"No one!"

He shrugs. "Then it's gone."

His words are a fist to her heart.

x

She collapses on the edge of the bed, surprised how hard the off-hand declaration hit her. It takes half a minute to get her breath back. "I have to find it," she gasps.

"If you ever had it."

This one is an open hand slap to her heart. "What?"

"Just because ... Just because you're..." He has to stop, to work his head around the outlandish thought. "You say you're a witch." She nods. At least they can agree on something. "Well, just because you're a witch - wherever - doesn't mean you were a witch here."

Another fist to her battered heart, and fear robs her breath. "Oh my Goddess," she can barely whisper the words. Cold sweat bathes her. "Do you know what that means?"

"What?"

She turns to him, looks up at the man who isn't her husband, so frightened she can barely think it, let alone say that "It means I can never get home."


	3. Strike Out

Chapter Three  
Strike Out

"No," Michelle Palmer declares, forcibly throwing off her terror, "I'm not going to believe that. The Goddess is good, the God is merciful – they won't abandon me."

"Then what are you going to do?" Jimmy can barely believe he's having this conversation, and that his dead lover - two years dead and buried - is alive and claiming to be his wife, and a witch… somewhere.

"I have to find my mirror." She looks around the bedroom, so familiar, so wrong. Their laptop isn't in the corner, even if there is one here, and she can't access the information she needs even if she had it. "My team can find it."

"What team?"

"My team - I mean _the_ team. Damn it, you know what I mean. I have to get to NCIS Headquarters."

x

Suddenly it all makes sense to him. Her breaking in, looking like Michelle, this ridiculous claim of witchcraft and Scrying mirrors and stranded and wife. "How are you going to get into the Navy Yard?" he asks, his voice drowning in suspicion.

She reaches into the pocket of her russet skirt, pulls out an ID folder and shows him very convincing copies, at least from across the room, of cards and shield. "But I need you to dri..."

He supposes he's given himself away.

"You don't believe me."

"A woman I never married claims to be my dead wife? _Come on_."

"I'll prove it. Ask me anything."

"Oh, I'm sure they have tons of files for you to stud–"

She sighs explosively. "Your left testicle is ticklish so you only like me to suck your right one, and when I take it in you prefer when I lick around clockwise."

They stare at one another for nearly ten seconds, then he checks for the keys in his left pocket. "You can borrow my jacket, it's probably cool out."

xxx

Jimmy didn't say anything about the overnight case upended on the living room floor, apparently deciding that at least it's good she has a jacket that fits. If she's to pass the front gate as an NCIS Special Agent, it will do nothing for her credibility to be in clothes that hang down to her knees.

Her biggest concern, as they approach the main gate, is that she'll encounter a sentry who knows her doppelganger's lamentable status.

Dead. She can't wrap her head around it. Her soul refuses to accept it. Not only is she not committed here to spend the rest of her life with Jimmy – no, with the man next to her driving this car – but she isn't even alive.

x

As they wait their turn as the third of the cars in the morning queue, Michelle glances at the man with Jimmy's face. "Relax, will you? You're just going to work. I'm the one who has to be scared."

He rips his eyes from the Sergeant with the AK-47. "Why aren't you?"

"Oh I am. Rule number 4: When you're sneaking in, look like you own the place."

"That's not–"

"_My _Rule 4."

"Do all of you people have rules?"

"Tim and I do." They advance to the gate. "Special Agent Gibbs is a good teacher."

"You sound so much like her," he tells her.

He's surprised by the depth of the pain this admission causes. To miss his dead friend is one thing, to be sitting next to her is quite another.

But there can be no answer to any of this with the Sentries beside them. Fortunately rule number 4 seems to be working. For all their nervousness, Jimmy is barely glanced at. The sentry compares Michelle's face with the photo on her NCIS ID. There are so many agents in so many fields, but why does it have to say Michelle Palmer? His heart is in his throat until they wave him through, but as he drives to Secard Street, he can only think of one last, overriding thing: "I miss her."

xx

They've decided that walking into Operations is the worst recipe for disaster, and that it's best to introduce the resurrected agent in a setting they can control. The best alternative is to recruit to their side a credible sponsor, one who carries far more weight in the Agency than Jimmy does. To that end, he leads her off the elevator through the sliding doors into the Autopsy suite.

The room is exactly as she last saw it last Thursday last, as is the man who sits at the desk across the room, back to them. Michelle catches her breath, her cold heart pounding.

"You are late, Mr. Palmer." He sounds exactly the same too.

"I have a really good excuse."

"Indeed?" He plays the intrigue heavily in his tone.

"You know how you always say the people you autopsy never talk back to you?"

Ducky turns in his seat. "Indeed I do, Mister Pal - - - ohhh … my … dear..."

xx

"An astounding story, Agent Lee. I'm sorry, Agent _Palmer_."

"It's taking me some time to get used to it too," Jimmy tells his mentor.

"I dare say, my boy." Halfway through the explanation the man had had to resume his seat, something Jimmy had only seen once and Michelle never had. The reality of twins in another coexistent world takes time to absorb.

"Your plan is sound, my dear, but doing the introductions gradually will prolong the situation with repeated and incomplete explanations, and I dare say you are in a hurry to get home – wherever that might be."

"That's my biggest dilemma. If I do find my mirror, how can I be sure I can get to my home?"

"First things first." Pulling on his jacket, he leads his protégé and his dead friend back to the elevator.

x

Michelle is very glad they've approached this worldly man first. She needs stability when fear is making the universe flip upside-down.

She wasn't afraid of facing Ducky first. Whether he believed her or not, he's as dangerous as a plate of spaghetti. The people she must now face carry guns, and she neither knows them nor has she built up two years worth of trust that comes with partnership.

In fact, if Jimmy is to be believed - and she has no reason not to - Special Agent Gibbs killed her twin, and the others hadn't lifted a hand to stop him, nor a voice in protest.

But if she is to get home, she needs these people.

'Goddess help me,' she thinks on board the elevator as she stands sandwiched between a Jimmy and a Ducky she never knew, being lifted up to the third floor, 'what if one of them decides to finish the job?'

The doors part.

Gibbs is in front of her.

x

Michelle's heart nearly seizes. Despite the fact that Jimmy looks and sounds like Jimmy and Ducky like Ducky and she hasn't found any differences in Headquarters yet, this is scary. Fortunately, she's not the only one unsettled by this meeting.

She has no idea how often this Gibbs is rendered speechless. His wide-eyed astonishment, however, gives Ducky the opportunity he needs.

"Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Mrs. Michelle Palmer."

There's something about a civilized introduction that puts people on their disconcerted best behavior; they revert automatically to ingrained manners. When Michelle is sure the surprised man, identical to the towering agent she knows, isn't going to shoot her, she puts out her hand, reinforcing the moment. Gibbs takes it automatically.

"Agent Gibbs, it's nice to meet you.

"Nice to meet you too," he says, obviously very uncertain.

"You only _think_ you know me, but I've come because I really need your help."

x

Gibbs begins to recover when: "Boss," McGee says, arriving from the bullpen, "you wanted to see the–"

Michelle, sandwiched between Jimmy and Ducky, had been hidden by the taller men, and even if she hadn't been there's something about being confronted by a dead woman in a hallway that makes the mind shut out the inconsistency - until one is presented, face to rapidly draining face, with the reality. "Oh my God..."

"Hello, Tim." Michelle can't think of anything else she could've said.

"Iiiiiii..."

"What's the matter, McGee? Never met a dead woman before?"

Gibbs is grateful for McGee's interruption. It gave him the precious instants he needed not only to recover some of his poise but to display that confidence in handling the situation that he assuredly does not feel.

There are only two more agents who must be presented with the impossible.

xx

"This is impossible!" Tony DiNozzo sums up all their feelings.

"Dead NCIS Agents do not come back to life," Ziva David declares.

"I don't believe it either," Gibbs says as though the petite woman were not standing in the center of the bullpen four feet from him.

"Special Agent Gibbs, please–"

Gibbs turns on her. "You may have impersonated Michelle Lee - _why _I don't know - but since you're in custody you're no danger." He hasn't yet placed her under arrest but, surrounded by agents, outnumbered by an entire building full of them, she's neutralized anyway. He turns on Jimmy. "And you, you should know better, bringing her here."

"She's telling the truth."

"How do you know?"

"She–" How does he know? She said she came through a _mirror_, but he ha no such thing. She appeared in his apartment. Locks can be picked, and he'd been busy, too busy to hear or care. She said she's his wife, she certainly acted like an outraged wife to Breena, accent on the acted. "I believe her."

"Michelle Lee is dead. We _buried_ her."

"Jethro," Ducky tries.

"Please, sir," Michelle extends her appeal to the men and woman surrounding her, "I can prove I am who I say I am."

x

Gibbs has dealt with imposters before. Her attempted infiltration is so bad, and was so easily neutralized, that he feels he can afford to play her game. For a minute.

"You want to prove to us that you're another Michelle Lee who never died but came from ... where?"

Faced with the bald question, and never having been able to lie to him, she has to admit "I don't exactly know, sir. All I know is that I have to."

"Why?"

"So you'll help me."

"All right," he takes a step back, feeling magnanimous. "Convince us."

"All right." She bites her lip, trying to swallow her nervousness and concentrate. She wishes she could. "Something only your partner could know."

She turns to McGee. "You bought your wife Siobhan a Claddagh wedding ring but the jeweler made a mistake engraving it so he gave it to you for cost. You've called her 'Shav' since a week after you met when you were fourteen. When you proposed she said she didn't want to rush the wedding like Jimmy and I did. When you gave her the ring you got down on your knee in the restaurant and the waitress tripped over your leg and spilled dinner over another couple. It cost you four dinners that night and a dry cleaning bill and you said you never minded, they were the best meals you ever bought." When she finishes her rush, she doesn't like the look he's giving her.

"I'm not married."

"Strike one," DiNozzo gloats.

x

"Wait a minute," Tim says, intrigued both by the news and the depth of the distress his answer elicits. She's really rocked by his saying he's not married. Why? The most cursory briefing couldn't have prepped her this badly. "Who is it I'm 'married' to?"

"Mother Siobhan McG– I mean she was Mother Siobhan O'Mallory."

"Mother?" Tony asks broadly.

"She's a priest."

"A _priest_?" Tony's starting to relish this absurdity. "You boom-booming a priest, Probie?"

"Apparently," he says dubiously. "You know, I _knew _a Siobhan O'Mallory once, a long time ago. I haven't seen her since–"

"High School."

How could she know this - and get everything else so wrong? "Yes."

"She became a Priest in Brooklyn, New York. You told us you were reunited the day she substituted at your church during your Rector's vacation, but you two were only friends until–"

"Check it out," Gibbs orders, not sure just how much longer he's going to let this play. McGee moves quickly to his computer.

"What about me?" DiNozzo asks, deciding this is more fun than completing his case report. "Have I got any secret girlfriends?" He can list many he hasn't told the others about, mostly because the dates were less than stellar successes.

"No, you and Jeanne are quite–"

"_What_?"

She backs away from the sudden anger. "Jeanne Benoit."

"Jeanne Benoit and I split years ago - right after she accused me of _murder_. I haven't seen her in over two years. Strike _two_."

"Not so fast, Tony," McGee calls from his desk where he's reading from his monitor screen. The agents cross the bullpen to his desk. "I've found _Reverend _Siobhan O'Mallory. She was at Saint Mary the Virgin Church here in Washington."

"Told you."

"Oh oh." They see his face fall as her learns of his long-ago friend. "Says here she disappeared about two and a half years ago–"

"On New Year's Day," Michelle cuts in, her voice so haunted he's pulled from his reading.

"How did you know?"

"Because that was the day you proposed - and she _was _kidnapped that day. And you rescued her from a bomb shelter accessed from the Sunday School room under the Church. Charlie Morley murdered several women, all from the church, but it was the death of Marine Lieutenant Christina Dumas that brought NCIS into the case."

x

They wait in silence while McGee checks this information. "There were two other disappearances linked to that Church a couple of months before Siobhan O'Mallory disappeared. Christa Alvarez and Chrissie Night."

"But not Lieutenant Dumas?" A few more moments, then McGee shakes his head. "Oh Goddess," she breathes, appalled as she feels the world tilt. She steps away, the huge room suddenly much too small. "NCIS never came into the case." She turns back to McGee. "You and Siobhan never became serious, she never became our Chaplain, you two never fell in love and got married – you were never there to rescue her from that bomb shel–" She feels sick. "She must _still _be..."

She turns to DiNozzo. "And you and Jeanne broke up after her father was killed and never _reconciled_, never had... Wait!" She whirls on Ziva. "You taught me how to fight. We spar together. You said from the beginning that NCIS' training was inadequate and you taught me Mossad techniques–"

"If your Handler were competent," Ziva snaps viciously, "you would know I am not _of _Mossad! I have resigned my position, renounced my allegiance to Israel, I am an American citizen and an NCIS Special Agent."

"_Probationary _Special Agent."

"Yes, Tony, as you are so fond of reminding me."

Gibbs has had enough. "DiNozzo."

"Strike _three_, lady," he says, tugging on her arm.

She reaches to break the hold but then clutches her stomach. "Oh Goddess, I think I'm going to be sick."

DiNozzo turns her around. "Be sick some other time." He holds her arm with one hand, pulls out handcuffs with the other and tugs her hands from her stomach around behind her back. "I don't know what your game is, lady, but like I told the _real _Agent Lee before she died I don't care." He locks the cuffs about her left wrist, pulls her right closer. "We'll figure out charges later when we sort this out, for now we'll just start with impersonating a Federal Agent."

He ratchets the cuffs tighter about her wrists.


	4. Trust

Chapter Four  
Trust

"Please! Wait!" Michelle protests, and as DiNozzo tugs her toward the bullpen exit she tries to dig her high heels into the carpet. She sees Jimmy at the exit, halted in distress. He'd believed in her; he and Ducky, standing beside him, were the only ones who had. "You have– Please! I _need_ your _help_!" She turns back to her 'friends'. "Please! I know what I did wrong!"

"Yeah, lady, you showed up this morning." Jimmy steps in front of them, blocks DiNozzo's path. "Get out of the way, Palmer."

"No."

Michelle pulls back, her sharp tug nearly pulling the much taller agent off balance and gaining her about two feet back into the bullpen. She doesn't want DiNozzo and her husband – not-husband – coming to blows if he's going to defend her. "I want to see Director Shepherd! _She'll _listen to me."

"You just keep swinging at strikes, don't you? Jenny Shepherd's dead."

"_What_? No! That's–"

DiNozzo yanks her arm; she pulls back harder, digging her high heels into the carpet. "You can walk or I can throw you over my shoulder and–"

Her cuffed arms snap forward and she grabs the lapels of his jacket, desperation giving way to outrage. "_Damn it, you listen to me_! I don'thave _time _for this!"

"DiNozzo," Gibbs calls to halt them, not sure he believes what he's just seen.

The petite woman has the much taller man's jacket bunched in her fists, the silver cuffs still clamped about her wrists. Two intact chain links dangle, one from each clamp.

The agents surround the pair and Gibbs inspects the intact links. "Not bad."

Michelle releases the amazed man's jacket, turns on her 'boss'. "_Now _will you listen?"

Gibbs looks at DiNozzo, shrugs. "Uncuff her."

"Don't _bother_." She stares at the right cuff, eyes narrowed in concentration. After three seconds it slips open and drops to the floor. A few seconds later the left one clatters down beside it.

"Can everyone do that where you come from?" DiNozzo quips to cover how shaken he is.

"No. Just me. But that's a parlor trick."

"You must throw some wild parties."

"Agent DiNozzo, you have no idea."

"Let's talk," Gibbs directs, goes to the vacant desk beyond McGee's, pulls out the unused chair and rolls it across the bullpen to in front of his own desk.

The irony only hits him then that this had once been Michelle Lee's chair.

x

Palmer stands tense at the bullpen access between Ziva's desk and the corridor, not sure what to think. This woman is Michelle, he'd never had any doubt of that. Well, almost no doubt. She's the woman he'd loved, the woman Gibbs murdered - yet she's not. This demonstration is something he's glad to have witnessed, for he doubts he'd believe the retelling.

"Ducky, you've been awfully quiet through all this," Gibbs says when they're all seated. Mallard has perched himself on the edge of Ziva's desk.

"I have been availing myself," Ducky says, "of the opportunity to observe a very unique and unexpected encounter."

"I love you, Ducky," Michelle says from the seat in front of Gibbs' desk.

"Indeed?"

"You're exactly like my Ducky."

"I hope to have the opportunity to learn more about the gentleman."

"Well, I'm hoping not to be here very lo–"

A loud crash at the bullpen entrance next to Jimmy makes him jump. All eyes turn to the white-smocked woman standing above a box of files.

"Oh my God!"

xx

"I should have asked to see you first," Michelle Palmer confesses, looking up from the chair at the scientist standing next to her.

"Let me get this straight," Abby appeals. "This is beyond hinky. This is _Uberhinky_! You actually came here by _magic_?"

"In a word. I knew you'd be the one who'd take it all in stride. We've been too good friends for too long to–"

"Oh, I'm not your friend - that is, I wasn't the _other _Michelle's friend," she hastens to correct. This is beyond uberhinky. "In fact, I didn't like her much at all at first. Too much talk before think."

"Well ... _we_ didn't exactly get along all that well at first either," she admits, feeling a crick in her neck and standing up. She still has to look up, but not so high.

"What changed it?"

"I nearly took a bullet meant for you - and _did _take a thorough beating while I was your Protection Detail."

"That'd do it - I guess," the stunned scientist finishes uncertainly. "I'm not really sure about any of this."

"Come on," Tony urges, inviting her deeper into the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. "Anti-Lee has just been regaling us with stories of our anti-matter selves."

"You mean where you're a priest?" Abby quips, trying to regain her grip on sanity. The world isn't supposed to be this hinky.

"No, where McGiggle's married to one."

"_Really_?"

"Give it a rest, Tony." Tim appeals from his own desk, the details about his old friend still on his screen.

"Sorry, Probie," Tony says. He's not sure of any of this madness, but he hadn't meant to hurt his friend.

x

Tim, half listening to their universe-hopping guest, had been reviewing the news stories of her disappearance and subsequent search in the early days of January more than two years ago. She's still 'missing', but if he's to believe Michelle _Palmer_, the hunt has failed because his old friend had never left her Church.

He hasn't seen Siobhan in over fifteen years, though they had had some very wild and erotic, carefree times in High School discovering the passion of youth, but that was a long time ago and can't really work up any emotional response other than a vague regret for her. But the picture on his screen, from a 'Missing Person' poster of the collared Episcopal Priest, has convinced him that the girl he'd known had become the woman he had not. And if she _is _dead, then maybe he can use Palmer's revelations to bring closure to ... someone.

x

"I realized my mistake too late," Michelle admits, sitting down again before Gibbs' - not-Gibbs' - desk, "trying to reveal information only a friend would have and revealing things about _my _friends. I should've just asked for you to run my fingerprints."

"Forget it," Abby declares. "Never work. Even if you were monozygotic twins, super-identical; even if you came from the same womb minutes apart and were identical down to your DNA, you'd have a one-in-a-trillion chance of even one finger getting a twelve point match. It just doesn't happen, though I'd love to try, but you'd wind up in handcuffs."

"Been there," DiNozzo says, "tried that. You should've seen it."

"We're married," Jimmy blurts out from the bullpen entrance. All eyes turn to him. "That is, _we're _not married, but we're married."

"Congratulations." Abby doesn't know what else to say and turns back to Michelle. "Any kids?"

"No way. We're still on our honeymoon."

"Really?"

"Two years."

"_Whoa_."

"'Sides, a pregnant Field Agent?" She shudders.

"I know. So, any wedding bells in _my_ alter-ego's life?"

"Let's keep things on target," Gibbs says sharply before the two women can get more deeply into this. These are not their lives. He is, in fact, having a hard time dealing with the concept that these other people are even real - despite the evidence sitting directly in front of him.

"Yes. Despite how interesting this is, I want to go _home_."

"What do you need?" Gibbs asks.

"I told you, my Scrying mirror."

"Describe it."

"Seven feet tall, three-and-a-half wide, mahogany frame carved with occult symbols, surmounted by a pentagram." She fingers the silver circled star hanging by a silver chain before her breasts.

"Palmer?" The man's illicit love affair had been the worst-kept secret in all of NCIS. In two universes, he suspects.

"I never saw anything when I was ..."

"Joined at the hips?" DiNozzo suggests. Jimmy glares at him.

"Some things don't change," Michelle mutters, leaving the men to sort out her meaning. "Jimmy - my Jimmy - my _husband _- had no idea I was keeping the secret until I came out and told him."

x

She reflects that her skills back then were nowhere near what they are now, but she'd successfully kept them secret. She'd never have imagined, at that time, openly wearing a pentagram at NCIS.

"McGee, that mirror's on you," Gibbs says.

"Go to it, McGoogle. Try not to break it, or we'll be stuck with Samantha here."

"_Speaking _of Abby's former roommate, Agent DiNozzo, you don't have the first idea what you missed."

She's gratified at his bewildered look - Abby's too - but she's not about to explain. She and Jimmy never went to Hawaii - she _hopes _he'd never been shot but she doesn't want to ask - so she suspects these people never met Sammy Sky. Their loss.

"While McGee's tracking down your mirror," Abby appeals, "would you come down to the lab?"

"You're not gonna dissect her, are you?" DiNozzo quips.

"Anthony," Ducky cuts in sharply when he sees sudden fright in Michelle's eyes.

Abby also caught it. "You think I'd dissect you?" she asks, amazed and distressed to see such fear. No one has ever been afraid of her. Well, maybe Chip Sterling, but he doesn't count as a person. "You can trust me."

"Frankly, I don't know _who_ to trust. You're not my friends. By some of your admissions you weren't even your own Michelle's friends. Perhaps if you were ... but I don't know. One of you killed her."

The words slap Gibbs in the face. He'd replayed that day, that last moment, in his mind thousands of times. He'd had to shoot. Did he have to shoot? Had he shot out of anger? Revenge? Did he _want _to shoot her?

It's been two years. Will he ever have an answer?

x

Michelle, knowing that both McGees – so odd a thought when she's used to 'McGees' referring to Tim and Siobhan – have far better computer skills than she does, Michelle agrees to Abby's request to try a few experiments. She forces herself to trust that they won't hurt.

She's put herself in these people's hands. She'd made the decision to do so. Now she has to trust.

She's glad that Jimmy stays at her side as she leaves the bullpen with Abby. She doesn't know exactly what he's thinking - he's not the man she knows, she must constantly remind herself of that - and she's probably ruined his life and has to be a painful living reminder of a dead lover, but she's glad of his company.

But before the elevator doors open, Tim McGee is with them. "You found it _already_?" she exclaims.

"No. Michelle, can I talk to you?"

"Sure," she says uncertainly, wondering at his urgency.

"_Are we happy_?"

"We?" Now she's more uncertain. Does he mean...?

"Siobhan O'Mallory and I. I ... haven't thought of her in nearly fifteen years, now you hit me with that she might be dead - for two years - and you hit me with a Tim McGee who married..."

She puts his hands on his arms, fixes his eyes with hers. "Tim, you are happier now than I've ever known you. And, believe it or not, so are Tony and Jeanne DiNozzo - don't tell him, I don't think he's ready. I'm so sorry to have brought you pain and believe me, if I could, I would do everything in my power to bring you the joy my Tim McGee feels." She looks back at Jimmy. "And I'm sorry about what I did to you and Breena Slater. If possible, before I go, I'll fix that." She turns back to Tim. "I don't have any idea if it'll hurt or help, but I swear there's a place where you and your wife –" she turns to Jimmy, "and you and your wife, are happy. Oh, and for whatever friendship you had with Jenny Shepherd, she's alive too in my … my plane of existence."

Tim draws her into a hug and for a long time that's all there needs to be. Then she feels Abby's arms around them as well, and then Jimmy's long arms enclose all.


	5. What Might Have Been  In Fire

Chapter Five  
What might have been – in fire

Gibbs uses the Iris scanner to enter the Multi-Threat Assessment Center, wondering if the greatest threat to NCIS is on her way down to Abby's lab.

Stepping down the ramp to the well, he glances to his left at the two technicians working at the control bank. He could order them to leave, to abandon their posts, but this is the communications hub for the Washington District. He can no more risk an unnoticed disaster arising than he can prevent the disaster downstairs.

He sits down in one of the front row seats, counting on his 'shut up and leave me alone' body language to get him the quiet he needs.

The men must sense his intense desire, they don't even glance at one another.

This is wrong. It's bad enough Lee betrayed everything they believe in, bad enough he had to kill her - he told himself and still believes it was to spare her a life-long prison sentence, but being confronted by her two years later is a particularly perverse hell.

Did he have to kill her? That's the question he's faced, and shut out, for two years. Did he have to fire? Could he have taken Ted Bankston without firing? He could barely see, couldn't aim, could he have shot past Lee's head and not hit her? He'd told himself that day that she'd told him to fire, knowing it meant her death. Her fate was better to be dead than spend the rest of her life in prison. Or was it? Would she have spent that life disgraced, behind bars, the best years of her life wasted and lost? He'd had only seconds. If Bankston had broken free, blinded as he was he'd - they'd both - be dead.

Would they?

He'd had seconds, only seconds. He's spent the past two years replaying, in unguarded, tortured moments, those seconds.

Now there's a Lee - a _Palmer _- downstairs who hadn't died. Had she faced those seconds? If so, what happened differently? She'd married Jimmy Palmer, that's all that's sure. She's part of 'his' team, that's claimed, perhaps true. She didn't die two years ago, that he can't deny. Had she kept that secret, that betrayal? Does she even _have _a sister/daughter? At the time he hadn't even wanted to know which version - sister, daughter - was the true one. He hadn't been sure which lie was true - had told himself he didn't care. Had he? Now - today - does he?

He should confront her, get the truth. But what is the truth? What if they - she and his ... twin - had been on that bus, with Bankston's gun forced aside for a moment and he hadn't fired, or had hit Bankston in the little target space he could barely see through eyes smeared with his own blood. What if he'd fired and hadn't hit her?

He'd told himself he had to fire. He'd convinced himself of it. But if not, does that mean he'd killed her unnecessarily? Does it mean he _murdered _her? He'd been angry over her killing Brent Langer. Did he revenge himself on her? Did he kill her because she killed Brent?

Does he want to know?

Can he stand to know?

xx

Michelle and Abby are in the lab - alone. Michelle doesn't want to be alone, but she has no choice. Abby had kept Jimmy from coming with them, had said the tests were best conducted alone.

She'd wanted him to stay with her as much as he'd wanted to stay. She feels secure with him, perhaps too secure? He's not her husband - he just...

"It's great to be right," Abby declares as she takes back the wireless fingerprint scanner and puts it back in its box.

"Don't let it go to your head," Michelle admonishes, wanting to break away from these discomforting thoughts. If she can't ... force herself ... to trust these people, she might never get home.

"Come on," Abby retorts, "when you get the chance to prove one of the Universal Verities, you're entitled to spend a minute gloating."

"I suppose so." But Michelle's depressed by the news. Not one of her fingerprints matched the recorded prints of her doppelganger. She'd wished for some connection with her 'sister'.

It seems there isn't any.

She turns on the monitor that Abby had blanked and her own face smiles back at her, an exact match to her former NCIS ID before the new photo with the name update - Palmer instead of Lee. The ID number is also correct. It's more unsettling than she'd thought it would be to see her own face - but not her face - smiling back at her.

Imprinted over the identification is a word in large capital letters set at 45 degrees, a big scarlet word: 'DECEASED'.

"Tell me about her?"

x

Abby had been dreading this inevitable question. "I'm not sure I can. I didn't know her well."

"Tell me?"

Abby struggles to find something fair. It's a harder struggle than she'd hoped it would be. "She was ... driven. Precise. She knew how things had to be and did her best to make them that way. She could drive Gibbs and the others up the wall with her reminders of the Law, of how things had to be done when Gibbs just wanted to ride rough-shod over suspects to get at the truth. I think in the end that defined them; he wanted truth by law and she wanted truth through law. They butted heads because she was the rudder and he wanted to steer."

"I remember," Michelle says softly, her eyes on the distant past. "I didn't have many friends in those days. I had partners who tolerated me - barely - because as my partners they had to tolerate me."

"What happened?" Abby wonders what two more years might have brought Michelle Lee to that Michelle Palmer had found.

"I realized I had to be less worried about how things _should _be and more with how they are. I had to be one of the guys."

"I don't think Michelle - our Michelle - could be. She was tortured. She carried a secret that ate her from the inside out - until it destroyed her."

"What?"

Abby reaches out, turns off the screen. "Her secret, not yours. But do him a favor, don't judge Gibbs too hard. By the time she told the team her secret it was too late. What happened couldn't be undone."

"Jimmy said it was treason."

"No," Abby declares definitely. "Michelle never betrayed anyone. She was trapped in a trap she couldn't escape alone. That's the tragedy; that she tried to escape it alone, that she didn't think she could come to her friends."

She turns, walks away. She has to put some distance between them, can't be this close and discuss Michelle Lee's death with Michelle Lee.

"Jimmy took it very hard." she turns back, remembering the hell her friend had endured. "He was angry - angry she died, angry that Gibbs shot her, angry that he broke off their relationship, angry he took so long - too long - starting to find - to look for - a way back to her. In the end ... the end came quickly. She was too late. Gibbs was too late. Jimmy was too late. All of us were ... too late."

x

"Could she have been saved?"

Abby had thought about that a lot. "No." It doesn't feel better to say it this time either. "Had she lived, she'd have lived in hell. She'd have died a little bit more each day. The secret - and I'm not going to tell you so don't ask - was like a cancer she couldn't get treatment for. When she finally tried to, it was too late, it had already destroyed her. Like a cancer, it would continue to eat her until her body did die, rotted inside before she lost her life." She tries to push the memory back into the box she'd locked it into so long ago. "But I'm glad she's alive - somewhere."

"Was she ever loved?" Michelle asks wistfully. 'Could my sister find some joy in all that pain?'

"I ..." She has to tell the truth. "I don't know. I honestly don't. I think Jimmy did, in a way, maybe started to ... but for them it became more about the sex. I don't think they ever got to the love because the sex just kept getting in the way."

"Well," Palmer grins, "sex with Jimmy _is _pretty spectacular."

"Do tell, girl!" She'd rather talk about this than anything so depressing.

"He's got this way of–"

xx

In the bullpen, in Gibbs' absence, there's even more speculating.

"What do you think, Probie?"

"If I don't answer, you're just going to tell me what you think."

"I don't trust her." DiNozzo declares firmly.

"Why not?"

But it's Ziva who declares "No one should have that kind of power. It is an offense."

"Against God?" Tony asks, as willing to bait one probie as the other. "I barely knew you cared."

Ziva comes around her desk, too offended to remain still, but she is not about to reveal the intimate details of her own faith. "She claims to be here because of an accident - but it was one of her own making. Rather than take a plane, she took an indulgent shortcut and I do not know how much damage it causes."

"What sort of damage?"

"Her very _existence _is damage! The news she brings has wounded both of you, knowing as you do that there are other yous - somewhere - much happier than you are. Palmer got over her, moved on. Tony, you accepted what Jeanne did–"

"I never accepted–"

"You, Tim, could have possibly lived your life in blissful ignorance, not aware that your friend is dead."

"I'm going to see _justice _for her. And for those other women."

"But you need not have had to."

"I'd've found out."

"You barely remembered she was _alive_, did not know she is dead. If Michelle Palmer had not come, you would never know that your old girlfriend can never be your loving wi–"

"_SHUT UP_!"

x

Tim hears his shout reverberate through the open floor, finds he's on his feet without ever having known he'd leapt up. He's shaking, heart pounding, mad enough that if she were in reach... Tony and Ziva - it seems the entire Operations department - had recoiled from his fury.

He turns and walks rapidly away, not knowing where he's going, not caring, only that it's away. Away from fury. Away from fate. Away from what might have been.

xxx

"Were you always a witch?" Abby asks, putting aside delightful speculation and lurid recollection for pure science.

"No. Actually I was raised an Episcopalian."

"Just like Michelle. Jimmy's Roman Catholic, by the way."

"Just like Jimmy."

"Huh. What are the odds?" Far from the facetious way the question is frequently asked, she does want to consider the congruencies of universes.

"Anyway," Michelle continues, "I didn't so much convert as I've tried to combine the two faiths in my life."

"How's that going?"

She's been asked this a lot and gives her usual answer. "It gives me headaches."

"Are witches so powerful in your ... universe?" It feels so strange to think it, let alone ask it.

Michelle shrugs. "Compared to what? I know that since I've been Transitioning so much, I've noticed my talents have grown. Whether I've just been training harder or there's something about the vortex, I really don't know."

"Must come in handy in your work."

"I never use it."

"Why not? If I could do magic, I think I'd do it all the time."

She shakes her head. "Not admissible in court."

"Oh."

"What's the point in doing a séance to find out who killed So-and-so if you just have to do the legwork anyway and–"

"LEE!" Michelle leaps off the stool as the woman's volcanic shout erupts through the lab and she whirls to the rear door in time to see Ziva advancing on her like a pyroclastic flow.

x

"I haven't answered to that in–"

"You are the _whirlwind_," the woman blasts, close enough to hit her. "You blow through this place and leave nothing but debris and chaos in your wake!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mea–"

"McGee was happy and now you have introduced him to a wife he can never know, a woman who is likely dead and whom he had _forgotten_. Tony had come to terms with what happened between him and Benoit. She was _gone _and he had changed. The man he was becoming did not need a girl, he needs a _woman_!"

The words batter Michelle and smash open the door to insight. "Oh Goddess, I'm _sorry_. The Ziva I know–"

"I do not want to hear about the 'Ziva you know'! She is not real to me any more than you are. You do not belong here!"

"It was an accident."

"Magic does not exist in this reality! You can never go back–"

"Ziva–" Abby tries.

"Shut up! The real Lee spent months here and destabilized everything, but we put things back together after she was gone and you have done more in one day than she did in months. Palmer, if he ever loved her, had moved on with his life, found a wonderful young woman he is happy with and you have probably destroyed that as well!"

x

Michelle's heart is ripped. The anger she'd seen on Breena Slater's face might never be expunged. She's taken the twin of the man she loves, a man who has shown her only kindness, and she's probably destroyed his happiness. He hasn't even blamed her - openly.

The rage in _this _woman, however, will be satisfied with nothing but blood. Or will it?

"Gibbs killed your Michelle," she points out, trying to get the angry woman to see reason. "Are you here to finish the job?" She doesn't believe it.

Ziva's right hand whips up from behind her back. Michelle's heart stops as she stares down the black barrel of the gun.


	6. Whirlwind

Chapter Six  
Whirlwind

Michelle freezes, startled more than frightened. She can't believe she stares down the black barrel of the Sig held by her friend and partner.

If ever she needed proof that these aren't the people she knows, she has it in this deadly testament.

From the stairwell entrance and into this deadly tableau steps Jimmy Palmer. He'd stayed away at Abby's direction for as long as he could stand, but on walking in he halts and his heart leaps into his throat. "Ziva?"

"Ziva, what are you doing?" Abby asks carefully, trying to keep her voice level, needing to get the irate woman to think about this.

"I told you to shut up, Abby." Ziva grasps the Sig with both hands, steadies it a foot from Michelle's right eye.

Jimmy's suddenly there and his hand slams into the gun, bats it aside. He's between them and his hand whips back, cracks against her face. Ziva staggers back as Michelle yanks Jimmy back out of the woman's reach.

Abby gets in front of the shocked woman, knowing that, when surprise gives way to anger, no one will be safe.

"_Get out of my lab_!"

Ziva glares past the enraged scientist at the stunned pair. She can't reach them and the world seems to hold its breath.

"Damn you." She reholsters the weapon. "_Damn you all_!"

She turns on her heel and stalks away, back to the elevator.

x

Jimmy stares after her, unable to think, too stunned by what he'd done to think of having done it. One moment he was standing feet away watching Ziva holding a gun on his - what? The next instant Michelle's yanking him backward and there's a red handprint blossoming on Ziva's cheek. His hand stings, but the slice to his conscience is more painful. "I've never hit a woman. I've never hit _anyone_."

"I know, darling. I–" The words freeze in Michelle's mouth as both Jimmy and Abby turn to her.

She turns, escapes past him, her trembling heart stabbed. She _can't _have–

Jimmy stares at Michelle, at his somehow-doppelganger's wife. "I've never hit a woman," he insists, needing to focus on something - anything - anything but what he saw in her eyes.

The trembling woman is so much like Michelle. So much like her.

"I know," Abby says, smiling at the fleeting memory. "It was kinda hot."

Jimmy and Michelle turn their shocked faces on her.

Too many revelations. Too many discoveries. Too many self-discoveries. Too much madness. "Oh Goddess," Michelle exclaims with shuddering breath, "I have to get out of here!"

x

Michelle Palmer has faced death many times, faced down gunmen and used her psychic talents to calm and in a few cases manipulate them, to defuse such dangerous moments - but she's never had a friend and partner ready to kill her. Then Jimmy - and her slip. He's not her husband. He's _not_! And how could Abby think of–?

'These people aren't my friends. I don't know them - despite their faces and bodies - and they don't know me. If I don't get out of here, how long before we go mad? How long before one of them kills me?'

Jimmy must read her face. 'He always can - no - he can't.' But he gets up and takes her in his arms and she's too petrified to stop him.

"I have to get out of here." She pushes him back, pushes him away. She doesn't want to. She doesn't want him to hold her. She doesn't want to push him away. She can't think when he's holding her. He is - he _isn't _- her husband but she doesn't want to push out of his embrace.

She has to.

"But how are you going to do it?" Abby asks, trying not to let them see how shaken she is. She'd never imagined Ziva being so driven as to pull a gun on ... her friend? No. Not friend, not enemy. What? And how could she _think _that sudden, unbidden thought about Jimmy? Okay, he did make her hot - for a second - but how could she _say _it? Is she crazy, how could she say that out loud?

"I don't know," Michelle admits in answer to the question, not to Abby's mental turmoil.

"If Mi–" Jimmy's halt is so sudden a scream couldn't have grasped their attention harder.

"What?" they both demand.

"Well, I - that - I - you–"

"Jimmy, _please_! If you have the answer, tell me!"

"I don't know if I have the answer." It just suddenly appeared in his head out of the madness. "But, well, when Agent Gibbs came back from Mexico, Michelle - _my _Michelle - was transferred back to Legal."

"I remember," Michelle admits.

"Oh, yeah."

She sees in their eyes what they must think to be a coincidence. She doesn't want to know by how much or even how. "Don't ask, long story."

She remembers how she'd felt like a ping-pong ball, enduring numerous transfers back and forth between the Field and Legal until the day she and Gibbs had had their showdown. She doesn't want to know if 'she' and this Gibbs ever had. She doubts it. So much would probably be different if 'she' had.

"Well," Jimmy continues, clutching reason when it wants to run screaming from the room, "my point is _you_ probably stayed a Field Agent, but Michelle never left Legal. She stayed there until she ... died."

"So?"

"Michelle was a lawyer, first and foremost. If she was also a witch too - you're both so similar - I'm just thinking that, if this mirror is so precious to you, maybe it was to her."

"And?" She's not sure, perhaps because of her distress and sudden blast of hope, where he's going. She can't follow him, there's too much - too many - insanities too quickly. Then again, sometimes she's not sure where Jimmy is going either.

"Well, I'm just thinking, if it was so valuable, so powerful, she'd be careful of it. Wouldn't she have put it in her Will?"

x

Abby and Jimmy watch as Michelle freezes, eyes wide, staring up at the man. "Michelle?" Abby tries after a few seconds.

"Oh my Goddess," she breathes. "I don't believe– You're brilliant!"

"I don't believe he's brilliant either," Abby quips in an effort to break the woman's paralysis. It works; Michelle turns on her.

"_Yes_ he is. Of course I would. And if she's anything like me, she did." She turns to Palmer. "Jimmy, I could kiss you!"

But her heart is wrenched as he takes a step back.

x

He's flustered to see her distress. He hadn't meant to–

"People, let's _focus_," Abby declares, trying to break anguish that can only torment both of them.

"Yes," Michelle shakes herself free.

Jimmy takes that step forward again, tries to reverse the damage he'd caused. This isn't the woman he'd loved and lost. Perhaps if he thought of her as a twin sister rather than as Michelle, he wouldn't have the powerful urge he feels to kiss her and wouldn't be bombarded by guilt and a thousand emotions.

Michelle, battered by as many emotions, escapes to the keyboard next to her.

She can't escape.

x

The logical place to look is in the Legal Department's records where she keeps a copy of her own Will. She decides to abandon the sensation of amazement for the rest of this 'Alice-in-Wonderland' trip when she finds the file there.

She uses the mouse control to open it.

She can't.

"What's wrong?" Abby asks.

"Ever feel like someone's just walked over your grave?"

"Yes," Abby answers carefully.

"Ever feel like you're about to dig up your own grave?"

"Want me to do it?" Abby can reduce it to an Investigation, even if she did know the subject. She can push aside emotion and treat it as business, pretend Gibbs asked her to research a file.

'Pretend. Yeah, right.'

Michelle wants to say 'no way!' She wants to say 'no, I'll do it.'

She gets off the stool. "Please?"

x

Michelle stands away, can't look at the screen, feels Abby's fingers scrabbling at the dirt that covers her coffin. Jimmy, behind her, puts his arms around her but his warm arms do nothing for the cold in her soul. She takes the hands that cover her stomach. He's so much like Jimmy. He can't be. He is. He _can't _be!

She stands silently, holds her breath, tries not to think, tries not to think of her grave being dug up and Jimmy's - of this man's - of _Jimmy's _arms around her.

After nearly thirty seconds Abby says from behind her: "Antique floor mirror bordered in mahogany and inscribed with arcane symbols? Circa 1880?"

She twists out of Jimmy's arms and hurries to the computer. "Yes!"

She never sees the pain she leaves behind.

x

"You - she - left it to her lawyer, Kendra Little, Esquire."

"_SHIT_!"

"What's wrong?" Jimmy's as surprised as Abby by the intensity of Michelle's epithet.

"I wish my Gibbs were here so I can release him from our deal not to slap me! Kendra's the High Priestess of our Coven - and the one I was considering leaving _my _mirror to!"

"That's good, then?" Jimmy asks.

"That's very good. I don't have to give a hundred explanations."

"Just one," Abby reminds her.

Michelle halts.

"Yeah. Why I'm alive."

x

"Abby, can you look up her number? I think I'll faint if it's 202-555-6209."

A few moments on the computer, then Abby advises: "Jimmy, catch her."

Michelle shakes her head. "The Goddess is having too much fun with me." She crosses the room toward Abby's office with Jimmy following close behind.

She's about to make the longest-distance local call of her life and has no idea what she's going to say.

x

The number of times the speaker phone sounds doesn't help her nerve. She finally abandons the call and punches another cell number. This rings a half-dozen times. /Hello?/

"Kendra?" It still feels unreal. Even though she's met twins of friends, this...

/Yes, who is this?/

Michelle knew what she'd done but tried not to consider the significance of it. Now it hits her hard. This is her Kendra's Coven line. But she _can't _claim to be–

/Who is this?/ the question comes more sharply. Michelle can picture the large black woman, opens her mouth and nothing comes out.

"This is Jimmy Palmer, NCIS," he says from behind her. She's as surprised as grateful for his rescue. "Remember, we met two years ago when you probated Special Agent Michelle Lee's will?"

/Yes, I remember,/ Little says with a touch of sadness at the Coven-sister's death, but it's quickly pushed aside. /Mister Palmer, this is a private number. How did you get it?/

"Well, I – from a Cov–. It concerns Michelle Lee's will. A ... complication has come up."

/What sort of 'complication'? It was an uncontested Will from two years ago./ The annoyance comes through very clearly.

'Kendra never was one to suffer fools gladly,' Michelle thinks.

/What sort of _complication _could arise now?/

She takes a deep breath, lets some of it out carefully. "Kendra, this is Michelle Lee."


	7. Back to Forth

Chapter Seven  
Back to forth

"You didn't have to drive me," Michelle says for want of something to say, no matter how ludicrous, as they approach Westchester along Tunlaw Road NW.

"Ridiculous." Jimmy had heard every word of the tense conversation. "You're going to leave my car in Westchester when you warp back to - wherever?" They'd stopped long enough at home - his home - to retrieve her cloak and overnight case. They'd known this was a one-way trip. They'd said goodbye to Abby, to Ducky...

She couldn't face the others. If Ziva was any indication of the disruption her presence had caused, it was best to just be gone. Quickly.

"I'm sorry about Breena," she confesses as he parks the car at the curb in front of a twelve story brick-face.

"We'll work it out." He has no idea how. He's not certain any explanation can be believed. He's still not sure how much he believes - everything. But...

Michelle wishes she could help. When Jimmy had called from the apartment, Slater had hung up on him. When he'd called back, the funeral attendant had threatened to make him a customer.

"What will you tell her?"

"The truth. We don't lie to each other."

"I'm sorry. I could–"

"No. We'll work it out. If necessary I'll get the others to help. I'll have Agent Gibbs show her the security videos if I have to."

x

Michelle holds her tongue on how likely this is. It's not her universe, not her people and she's messed up enough things already. "I'm sorry. To you, to Breena, to Tim, to Tony, to Ziva..." In all this debacle, Abby and Ducky and Gibbs are the only ones she hasn't hurt.

That she knows of.

"I'll tell them," he promises. She reaches for the door handle. "Are you sure you can get back?"

She lets go of the lever. "No."

She's avoided thinking of this very thing. "I can't imagine how many places there are. This should never have happened, I don't know how it happened, how to do it, how to undo it, how I find my home in a billion realities and I've screwed up everything I've done since I got here."

"Oh, is that all?"

She laughs. Better than crying. "Yes, that's all."

"Maybe this Kendra will know how."

"I pray to Venus she does." She opens her door. He opens his. "You don't have to come."

"You kidding? I wouldn't miss it."

xx

High Priestess Kendra Little's apartment looks, to Jimmy's eyes, no different than any other professional woman's home. Whether or not he'd pictured it to be like Abby Sciuto's, it's more suited to a Defense Attorney who might do home consultations. He's half-inclined, in fact, to imagine that a touch of a secret button might rotate wall panels and trap doors and change hanging spotlamps from white light to black.

The large black woman, despite initial preparation, is still taken aback by her visitor. "I've seen strange things on many planes," the woman confesses after Michelle's explanation, looking down at her 'deceased' friend, "but none stranger than this."

"I've been seeing strange things all day," Michelle confesses. "This could completely pass for my world - except I'm not in it."

"Be grateful you didn't meet yourself, child. The strangest things can happen."

"Amen."

"_Excuse me_," Jimmy cuts in. "How is it _you're _not freaked out by this?" To date, only Ducky had come close to taking this situation in stride, and even he had had to take several minutes to adjust.

Little turns on him. "Haven't you been listening, young man? I've been doing this since before you were born. I've seen things that would put hair on your chest."

Michelle giggles, stifles it with a hand clamped to her lips. "I'm sorry, honey - I mean _Jimmy_," she corrects, flustered. "It's just that that's the same thing Kendra told you."

She stops, even more flustered.

"Well, I think we should get right to it," Kendra directs firmly.

"What's the hurry?" Jimmy can't help but break in. He'd hoped for more time, not a mad rush.

Again Kendra turns on him, her manner just as haughty. "I'm not going to go into detail, but I don't think either of you have stopped to consider the danger involved in this."

"She might not get _back_?"

"That's a real possibility, but I'm _talking _about the imbalance of having two Michelle Lees on one plane - one dead and one not - and none on the other!"

By Michelle's distress, they can tell it's something - one more complication - that she had never considered.

"Come with me," the large woman orders.

xx

Her twin's Scrying mirror stands in the bedroom, as identical to the one she owns as anything she's seen in this ... world - dimension - plane; she's not sure. She's only coming to appreciate that inanimate objects are as identical as people, that only placement and relationships - and life - are different. She is, however, happy to see what she thinks of as her ticket home.

"All right," Little directs firmly - does she do everything this way here? - "what did you do to get here? _Exactly _what did you do, and how?"

"Well, let's see... I said 'goodbye' to Jimmy, we were talking about the trip, about how each of us will spend the weekend. I was going to the Beltane Festival in Salem, he was going to study - I think. He asked me why I didn't wear the pentagram he'd had made for me instead of this one, I explained–"

"Girl, it's a wonder you get _anywhere _safely," Little cuts in with a huff. "Don't you know how to focus, and how important it is?"

She's had enough of this day. "_Yes_, I know how to focus. I hadn't cast the spell yet!"

"Good thing too. Distracted when using this mirror, it's no wonder you got lost."

x

Michelle's about to bite with another angry retort when the words slam into her. "Get lost. The very last thing Jimmy said to me, just as I cast the spell, was 'don't get lost'. I looked at him in the mirror as I stepped through and said 'I never get lost'."

"You went through thinking of getting lost as you looked at the _mirror-image _of your own home."

"Oh, no."

"Oh no, indeed. There's a saying on this plane, child: 'Be careful what you wish for'–"

"'Because you might get it'."

"Uh huh. Happens with magic all the time. I made your ... sister ... understand that thoroughly before I ever allowed her to use this."

Michelle won't protest that she'd been taught as well. She has no excuse that'll stand up. She'd grown careless, allowed self-confidence - overconfidence - to take her, and she'd done this to herself.

"But how can I fix it?"

"You'll have to concentrate - and I mean _concentrate _- on your own home this time. It's likely you shifted over into the 'next' dimensional plane, which is why so much seems familiar. You got _lucky_, but you can't depend on luck. You have to get this _right_, because if you get lost again, you may slip so far away things will be so different there won't _be _a way to get back."

"Thanks."

"I'm not trying to make you scared, girl, I'm trying to make you careful. Now a good thing is that you're married. Did you do a Handfasting?"

"I tried, Jimmy … wouldn't."

"Maybe close enough that you're married. You're bonded to your husband, and you can use that to distinguish your world and get home."

"When can we do it?"

"I really recommend now."

That suits Michelle perfectly. The longer she waits, the longer she has to dwell on potential disasters, like another universe so similar to hers she can't tell the difference until it's too late. Or worse, a world where there is no Scrying mirror.

That world will be her trap.

x

She throws the purple and green cloak about herself, purple velvet side out, and clutches the silver circled star that hangs before her breasts, clutches it until she's no longer afraid.

Then she sees Jimmy and she can't go.

x

He looks so wistful, so forlorn.

"Jimmy, I ... I wish I knew ... I'm sorry."

"No. I understand. I do."

"Thank you for everything." This stabs at her heart. He's so much like Jimmy, and she's about to hurt him. She can't hurt him. "I don't deserve all you did–"

"You do. I–"

"I wish there were some way I could thank you. I know there isn't, you did so much, sacrificed so much, I just wish I could–"

He holds up his hands, but it's a long moment before he can make himself say it. "There is something you could do."

She's apprehensive. What could he ask of her? He's so much like Jimmy. "What?"

He steps closer.

'He's so much like Jimmy,' she thinks, ignoring the nonsense of the thought.

x

He reaches out, she takes his hands. "I never–" Emotion steals his voice. His throat is tight, he opens his mouth and nothing comes out. He has to push the grief down to say the words, but they come out hushed. "I never had ... the chance ... to say goodbye."

She lets him pull her closer, his arms about her, his lips to hers. She tries not to think of Jimmy, but to think of this Jimmy - and love torn and shattered.

It's a long kiss, but when it ends she turns away, wipes tears from her eyes.

Her vision clears, she sees she's facing the mirror.

Turning away had meant nothing.

She has to try several times, but the best she can manage is a whisper hushed by a broken heart.

"Goodbye, Jimmy."

x

Clutching her travel case, she keeps her eyes clenched tightly shut. She won't see him, won't see Kendra, won't see - won't think about - anything. She'll only think of the spell, the portal - Jimmy - the _real _Jimmy - her real Jimmy - her husband, her love, her other half.

oo

She steps forward, feels herself pass the barrier, knows in the silence that fills her ears that she's in the vortex. She won't see it, won't see the blackness, the scintillating lights of every hue, the rushing light that warps past or through her, the brain-blasting colors. She'll just keep walking, just keep walking through the silence, through the flashes and streamers of multi-hued light. She won't see it, won't think about it, won't think about anything but Jimmy - and home.

oo

Michelle feels herself step back into reality - there's sound and gravity and – she opens her eyes.

She's in her living room. The lights are on. Everything _looks _normal. She's home!

Or is she? She was home the first–

Transition vertigo slams her, just as hard as before. She staggers, the travel case falls from her nerveless fingers and slams to the floor. She has barely enough time to think how good it is that it's a strong box when the next wave, even harder, slams her and she crashes to the floor.

Clutching her stomach, trying to keep from curling up into a fetal position, she fights. The nausea batters her and she fights back. The room spins, every part of her body strains to run off in a different direction. Clenching her teeth, she struggles to keep from passing out. 'Can't pass out! Am I home? Am I lost? It looks– Am I–?'

She forces herself to look up toward the hall doorway when she hears footsteps come up the hall from the bedroom.

The world flips upside down when Abby Sciuto comes out.

x

"Oh Goddess!" Michelle pants, "oh Goddess no! Oh God, _please _no!"

"Michelle?" Abby looks amazed to find her on the floor.

"Goddess, no! Please! Merciful Goddess, don't let me–"

Jimmy steps out of the hallway behind the surprised scientist. "'Chelle'?" He hurries to her, comes down on his knees.

She clutches his hands. "_Jimmy_! Please _tell_ me you know me! "

"'Chelle?" He grips her shoulders, raises her to her knees but nausea rips at her, she clutches her stomach but stays on her knees.

"Please - I'm _begging _you!" she cries, tears slipping down her cheeks. "_Tell me who I am_!"

It's Abby, standing beside them, who says with great care: "You're Michelle Palmer, Special Agent of NCIS."

She looks up at the Goth woman. "Not _Lee_?" Terror makes her demand it.

"Not for two years," Jimmy says with greater caution, still holding her shoulders, balancing her, helping her keep the world from tilting her off.

"Then we're married?"

He's even more careful, unable to understand her panic. "Ah ... yeah, for about two years."

"Quick, when was the last time you saw me? What was I doing?"

"What do you–?"

She clutches him tighter. "_PLEASE_!"

"Yesterday evening," he says apprehensively. "You were going to a festival in Salem."

The world turns right-side up. "_Oh thank Goddess_! _Thank you Venus_!"

"'Chelle, what happened in–?"

She grips him harder, relief obliterated by terror. Another blast of nausea rips at her, nearly doubles her over and she fight it back enough to plead through clenched teeth: "Quick, my pendant! Bring me my pendant!"

"Wha–?"

She looks back up to him. "_PLEASE_!"

Abby shoves him. Jimmy, near panic himself, gets to his feet and hurries to the bedroom, leaving Abby to bring the kneeling woman down. "Michelle, what's wrong?"

"Jimmy had it made special. It's the only one in the world! I have to see it!"

Jimmy returns to the room, the pendant dangling from the silver chain. He kneels before her, she snatches it from his hand.

Jimmy had given her the combined circle and five pointed star enclosing a Christian cross when they'd gotten engaged. She knows it intimately. She inspects it closely, very closely. It's exactly as she remembers.

She takes a deep breath, swallows her fear as best she can - not at all - and reaches into it with her special senses. She's charged this amulet over a hundred times.

It resonates with her power.

It's hers.

"Thank you, Goddess. _Thank _you. I'm _home_!"

x

"_Of course you're home_," Jimmy explodes, unable to endure this any longer. "What the heck happened to you in Salem?"

The world now aright, another question slams into her. While she was losing her mind in a world that should never be– "What is Abby doing in our _bedroom_?"

"I wasn't in your bedroom!" Abby declares, offended to think her friend can think what her voice so clearly conveys. "I was in your _bathroom_."

"Oh. But - well - it's just that - _why_?"

Abby shrugs innocently. "Well, I had to–"

"Abby," Jimmy cuts her off, turns to his wife. "Abby came to bring you the results of your blood test."

"Yes," she confirms. "I didn't know you were away, I wanted to give them to you, not just Jimmy."

"Wait!" The world is tipping off its axis again. She's too sick for it to. "Blood test? _What _blood–?" Then she remembers.

"Your annual physical last Friday? Remember?"

"I remember."

"Sorry it took me so long, two hundred seventy two tes–"

"WHY are you bringing me my _blood test_?" She should get it when she goes to work. There can only be one reason why the personal visit - there's a disaster. "What's _wrong _with me?"

"Nothing. I came to give you the news." She glances left, defers to Jimmy.

He smiles, takes Michelle's trembling hands. "Congratulations, darling. You're pregnant."

_Fin_


End file.
